The Effects of Positive versus Negative Feedback on Rôle Ambiguity

The present study examined the directing, as distinct from the motivational, effects of feedback sign. Rôle ambiguity was chosen as the dependent variable because the directing function of feedback relates directly to the level of task understanding and not, necessarily, to the level of task effort. It was hypothesised that positive feedback would have a stronger directing effect than negative feedback and, therefore, would lead to greater reductions in rôle ambiguity. Survey data were collected from 530 subjects in a variety of jobs in four different Australian organisations. The hypothesised effects were supported. However, multicollinearity between feedback amount and positive feedback reduced the latter to nonsignificance in a model including both variables. Tests for possible moderators showed that positive feedback had a greater effect on rôle ambiguity than did negative feedback for all job types in all organisations. All results were cross validated on two randomly selected sub-samples.